The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1887-08-27
Industrial Training for Girls.
BY MRS. MARY A. LIvERMoRE.

BY MRS. MARY A. LIvERMORE.
IfIwe able, I would change the
public sentiment SO radically that no
girl should be considered well educated,
no matter what her accomplishments,
until she had learned trade, bust
ness or a profession. There would
then be fewer fathers and brothers toll
ing like galley-slaves to support healthy
and vigorous human beings in stagna-
ting idleness-idle for no earthly rea-
son save that God has made them
women.
FASH Sf6is y hskss disspSendent and nef
ficient women of our daughters it puts
them in fearful peril morally. Indo-
lence is always demoralizing. 1t ruins
health, destroys beauty and enfeebles
the will. sOut of 1000 fallen women
in the City of New York, 1880 had
been brought up to do nothing SIS
pleaded restitution as the cause of their
sad life.' In view of these facts, which
might be multiplied indefinitely, ought
we not to rid ourselves Of the inherited
social idea that it is shameful thing
for young women to betaught to support
themselves by honorable Industry
In an early stage of the late war, be-
fore the government had organized its
various departments, I saw body of
soldiers march from the St. Louis camp
of rendezvous, and embark on boats
to go down the Mississippi. Among
them were companies without uniforms
and without equipments. The men
wore the citizens dress in which they
had enlisted. 1t was explained that
they had been ordered to the front i'm
mediately after enlistment, in advance
of the arrival oftheir uniforms and guns,
to maintain the morale of the army,
which was unfavorably affected by the
mastering out of large numbers who
had enlisted on short terms of service.
Uniforms, guns, and the all-important
drill would be given these raw recruits,
we were told, when they reached their
destination.
Two or three weeks later, met some
of these very unequipped men, still
without uniforms, on board hospital
boat, steaming slowly up the river en-
route for the superb general hospitals of
St. Louis. Some of the poor fellows
were so rent with shot and she'll that
their own mothers would not have rec
ognized them. l heard their pitiful
story from many lips, but it was always
the same story. Hardly had these
green boys in the clothing of civilians
reached their regiments, when they
were surprised by the enemy; without
guns or an hours drill, they were
plunged into sharp disastrous engage
ment. Shot at, shot down, they could
make no defence; for they had not
been supplied with the munitions of
war, not taught how to use them.
1t is as wasteful, as unwise, as inhu-
man, to send out delicately nurtured
and tenderly reared young daughters
out from the house to fight the battle
of life without an equipment in the
form of an industrial and business edu-
cation, as it was to send these hapless
young fellows to fight the enemy with
out drill, and without guns. The re-
suits are more disastrous, and reach
farther. Our daughters are not shot
down, like the unframed military re-
cruit they live, but with no individual
grasp on life. They become anxious
concerning the future, with no power
to provide for it. At the mercy of
circumstances which they know not
how to control; victims of petty be-
liefs, old abuses, and respectable tyran-
mics, they drop into mental ill-health,
and bodily disease comes with it.
Or they marry and make faithful,
loving, lovely wives to admiring hus-
bands. But the husband dies. He
was living on salary, which ceases
with his life. His young widow has
one or more children. What is she to
do? Or the husband may drop into
permanent invalidism, or into bank
ruptcy, or into dissolute habits. If the
young wife has not been in part prepar-
ed for emergencies by previous training,
her lot is hard indeed.
ooh, you can't prepare girls to meet
such emergencies ! said an eminent
clergyman, in whose parlors this topic
was being earnestly discussed. you
must prepare them to he good wives
and mothers, and risk the rest. There
you will have to leave them, and trust
in Cod
Our trust must be in God, to be
sure. No one disputes that. And yet
have the deepest respect for the adj
vice that Oliver Cromwell gave his
soldiers, Trust in God, and keep your
b07Ode7- Dry